You’ve probably already seen it everywhere: Google’s Legalize Love campaign launched this morning. Despite early reports that Legalize Love was a U.S.-based campaign to make same-sex marriage legal, Legalize Love is actually about the civil and human rights of LGBT Google employees around the world.
The Washington Post reports Google’s announcement:
Though our business and employees are located in offices around the world, our policies on non-discrimination are universal throughout Google. We are proud to be recognised as a leader in LGBT inclusion efforts, but there is still a long way to go to achieve full equality. Legalise Love is our call to decriminalise homosexuality and eliminate homophobia around the world.
At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In all of our 60 offices around the world, we are committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. We also want our employees to have the same inclusive experience outside of the office, as they do at work, and for LGBT communities to be safe and to be accepted wherever they are.
Google also explains the ways in which it has supported LGBT rights in the past, and how it will in the future.
What do you think of this campaign? Do campaigns like this make a difference?
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I think these campaigns absolutely make a difference – not just for Google employees, but for people reading about them. And I adore the “bring your whole self to work” idea – that really is something we should *all* be able to do *all* the time: be our whole selves. I also love that it’s about equality and ending homophobia – and not overly focused on marriage equality. While a worthwhile concern, and definitely a big deal for many people, I find some things are too centered on marriage equality – which can be somehow heteronormative, religious, and limiting to the scope of equality we need to achieve in the world.
Nikki, I totally agree with you.
Marriage equality IS a huge deal, however it’s easy to forget that there are still such a startling number of places where simply loving, or having sex with, the person you choose to (as consenting adults) is illegal. It’s actually a window into how much progress we’ve made. And in acknowledging progress, we must see the progress still to be made both here and elsewhere.
Nikki, I think your line of thinking would make a brilliant feature article. I’m gonna shoot you an email
“While a worthwhile concern, and definitely a big deal for many people, I find some things are too centered on marriage equality – which can be somehow heteronormative, religious, and limiting to the scope of equality we need to achieve in the world.”
The phrase I’ve heard used to describe it is homonormative…basically shifting the gender of the parents in a stereotypical nuclear family (and all of the associated assumptions about sex and gender) and calling that “normal.” Which, that kind of misses the whole point which is that the nuclear family isn’t the only way to go.
But yeah, Go Google! I definitely think that companies making these sorts of statements helps create change, particularly companies that have such a huge platform to get their message out as Google does.